


Tereza My Love

by mangneov



Series: No Straight Roads Ficlets [4]
Category: No Straight Roads (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Fair amount of, M/M, Mangneov fills an entire tag solo challenge, Oh yeah they're actually together in this one, Pre-Canon, Shaving, These two are both chronic pet name users, Unreliable Narrator, Unreliable POV?, You were spared this time, actually, headcanons galore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-10
Updated: 2021-02-10
Packaged: 2021-03-16 06:47:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29328039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mangneov/pseuds/mangneov
Summary: Neon J asks for some help in performing a simple, everyday activity.
Relationships: Neon J. (No Straight Roads)/The Mystery Mural Guy
Series: No Straight Roads Ficlets [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2150424
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	Tereza My Love

"Can I ask you for a favor? It's kind of a weird one."

"...How weird?"

J fidgets; the items he's pilfered from Bernadotte's bathroom clink together under his sleeves. 

"Um—can I give you a shave? It's just—it's been such a long time, and I've been thinking about it. About shaving."

After an agonizing stretch of silence, Bernadotte chuffs out a laugh. He cuts the gas to his stove and sets the frying pan on a cool burner.

"Alright."

:::

The last time J held a razor, he was thirty.

After the war, his barracks had been cleaned out by someone that was not him. Returning home did not reunite him with the plastic razor his dad had lent him when his first hairs had started growing in—the one he'd used until he was twenty. Returning home had not even reunited him with his dad.

There are plenty of reasons that this is a bad idea. 

Most notably, he's never shaved with fingers made of metal. The artificial nervous system could cut out at any second and he'd strike a cut into Bernadotte's lip. He won't be able to control himself even without malfunction, and he'll end up making him bleed—

"Are you worried?"

J wrings out the wet towel in the sink with vigor. "It's just a shave. Why would I be worried?"

Bernadotte smiles from behind his knuckle. "Of course."

The towel is hot and sufficiently soaked. Any residual drippage is soaked up by the sleeves of his robe. Bernadotte's always got it laid out for him in the guest room when he visits. It's the same shade of red as the band around his wide brimmed trilby.

(J's always felt a little weird after the war without a weight on his shoulders. Winter's become his favorite season for the parkas alone.)

He sits across from Bernadotte on the edge of the bathtub in the master. The guy's sat his glasses on his forehead and has his sleeves rolled up as he fiddles with the radio in his lap. He's got a pillow under his ass, 'cause he's a big dude with old man balance, and J pokes at him with a foot just to see him teeter-totter.

"I'll change my mind if you keep that up," he threatens.

"And turn down the best shave of your life? _Your loss~_ "

Bernadotte's head tucks down into his smile, and he closes his eyes obediently. 

J runs the towel over the grooves of his chin. It feels puffy with a barrier inhibiting actual contact, but J is aware of the sharp edges of it.

Bernadotte's still grinning when he takes away the towel. J had felt it.

He'd also settled on a channel while J was prepping, tuned it in even with his eyes closed. It's quiet enough that it sounds more like occasional pips than an actual song, but Bernadotte sets the radio down on the toilet seat with satisfaction akin to if he'd found a symphony. 

J rests the damp towel on his shoulders, and runs a hand through Bernadotte's hair to rid it of any final wetness. It leaves blackish streaks behind in the dark grey. 

"Ain't treating the customer with much respect, are you?" Bernadotte asks

J shakes the bottle of shaving cream by his hip. "Customer? Bee, this is free. I got reign to do whatever I want."

He squirts out a dollop of shaving cream onto Bernadotte's nose as an example.

He quickly moves onto his chin before he can retaliate, and Bernadotte, whose backbone practically melts when he's in the quiet of his apartment, stays silent. He's never inactive—no. It's better described as relaxed. Only when he's here (in this headspace) does he allow himself to fall into the hands of another person.

J brings the razor to his left cheekbone and wonders why those hands, out of all the hands in the world, are his. 

J and Bernadotte—they're not _great_ for each other. Two of a kind Bobbsey twins. Both from that strange rock-n-roll generation (a generation they'd since rebelled from), and each had a dainty young sister at their heels that they'd last seen in their twenties, and J drank during the Border Wars and Bernadotte smoked through his, and neither had a family to come back to when it was all over and done with.

Subatomic and Jilpa, geniuses that they were, would say they made far too similar a pair. J's parents would simply point at the Adam's apple in Bernadotte's throat.

J disagrees.

He wouldn't say they were similar at all. He'd grown up in a house wider than Bernadotte's had been tall. J had explored the developments of rock while Bernadotte had stuck with its roots. J had been on the bottle until physically impossible, and Bernadotte had quit smoking the second he'd been asked to stop. 

Magaly—the sister; the daughter—were always one in the same. So unlike his own Hyo-Sonn, who he could still remember the voice and the eyes and the rough pixie cut of. Bernadotte would tell stories about them, the sister or the daughter, and J would never be able to pull them apart from each other. All he could see was his own younger sister, fourteen and gangly, waving at him from the porch and shouting at him to promise he'd come back.

'I will!' he'd said, and he'd pushed up his glasses with his pinky, just like their dad did. 'I'll be back before you know it!'

Bernadotte and J _aren't_ similar. And yet they aren't opposed enough, either 

J is bombastic, but Bernadotte responds with little annoyance. Bernadotte takes things slow, but J is willing to put on the brakes for him. When one pulls the rope, the other lets him have it.

J loves him. Loves to be with him in every way imaginable. There's nothing toxic or unloving between them. 

It's just a stalemate. 

J looks between them, and he wonders: _how long can we do this before you get bored of me? How long before you leave? I know you've done it before, and I know you have the capacity to do it again. So, when?_

He wipes the razor blade clean on the towel around Bernadotte's shoulders. The shave is a little uneven near his ears and under his nose, and there's a nick the size of a pin head on his right cheekbone, but he's otherwise unscathed. J wipes the towel across his chin silently, and when he's finished, Bernadotte smiles.

A minor quirk of the lips. Unbalanced and favoring his left. Aching with familiarity. 

"Feels good," he says, and he skates two fingertips along his jaw. "You did a pretty fine job."

"I told you. Best shave of your life."

Bernadotte gestures, and J tips his head as his lips come to rest at the junction of his shoulder. J runs a hand lightly through his hair, down his neck, and along his cheek and to his back, and allows him to stay there for awhile. 

"Thanks," he says, too, as it feels appropriate. 

"Not a problem. I appreciate the pamperin'."

"Oh please, this was hardly pampering. I can show you _pampering~_ "

Bernadotte's head knocks against his chin. Unintentionally, of course. 

"Maybe later, ta? I have to go make sure I still have a kitchen."

"You turned the stove off," J reminds him.

"Oh, I did?" Bernadotte thumbs at his neck in thought, and then shrugs with an accompanying return of his glasses over his eyes. "You'd know better than I. Good thing, too. I'm real hungry."

"Ah-I'm sorry about this," J apologizes.

The guilt transfers in a second. "I'm not upset with you. Like I said: I appreciate it."

And, when a response doesn't come, he crouches back down.

"I mean it," Bernadotte repeats, and J angles his head tentatively. "I don't mind when we do these things, and if we did them again."

It's enough to get him to relax. "Well—thank you. I wouldn't mind if we did this again either."

Bernadotte kisses the crown of his head. J squeezes the hand on his shoulder in reciprocation. 

"Join me when you're ready, darl. Lots of public works filing due today."

J groans. "Mood killer."

"You sure like saying that."

"Then stop being such a mood killer."

Bernadotte dodges a flick to his thigh, surprisingly spry for his old-man legs. Or maybe J's reflexes are starting to whittle down too. They're both in their forties now, which J had never considered 'old' until he was in them, despite the cyborg body and all. 

But if his forties and beyond are like this, eight thirty a.m. on a Saturday, still in his sleepwear and someone else's bathrobe, and shaving—a razor once again in his hand, even if not on his face? If Bernadotte sticks with him through it, well, he thinks he could find it in himself to let himself be okay.

**Author's Note:**

> Bernadotte's hat is definitely not a trilby. Even a "wide-brimmed" one. I didn't want to go with a fedora, though, because that's boring. A cowboy hat would probably be the closest, but the term doesn't fit his image. After a bit of research, I envisioned it to be a trilby with a panama style brim, with the added cut in the side. 
> 
> But that's just boring hat talk. How about boring music talk instead?
> 
> The album for this writing session was Stoneflower. It's not really a mood setter though. I've just been listening to a lot of jazz while writing these.


End file.
